The Ethics of Information Warfare and Statecraft

by Dan Kuehl

THE ETHICS OF INFORMATION WARFARE AND STATECRAFT

Dr Dan Kuehl

NDU/School of Information Warfare & Strategy

The views and opinions expressed in this article express those of solely the author and should not be construed to represent the official views of the Department of Defense or the National Defense University

What constitutes an "act of war" in the "information age. This is a question that most members of the "IW community" have wrestled with, and it's a question that places one squarely on the horns of a dilemma: if you cannot easily answer whether an act belongs to the legal codes of war or peace, how can you make a determination of the act's ethical status?

There is a mindset that IW has become part of the ongoing debate about non-lethal weapons and military technologies. While this is not the place to enter the debate about the effectiveness or utility of such technologies and capabilities, this is a good place to briefly explore what we mean by "non-lethal"? A bomb that blows up a train or airplane is certainly "lethal", but what of a HERF Gun that disables all electronically controlled systems, including signal devices or movement controls, and thus causes crashes or other movement failures that result in injuries and death...is that "non lethal?" The distinction between what could be called first-order and second-order effects is important. A laser-guided bomb, delivered precisely against a target of clear military value and entirely in accordance with the existing laws of armed conflict--an electric power plant--might not kill or injure anyone in the immediate explosion of the bomb, yet help create the conditions that later lead to illness and fatalities. The distinction between immediate and longer-term collateral damage is not new to the information age, but its technologies exacerbate the uncertainty as well as focus the publicity that accrues from such events. If these issues are the subject of vigorous and widespread debate over old and long existing technologies such as aerial-delivered high explosive bombs, how long will we wrestle with the uncertainty surrounding the use of new and technologically sophisticated devices?

This leads almost directly into another key issue, the growing intermingling in the integrated information society of systems used and needed by both the military and civil sides of society. A century ago this was a minor problem because of the limited reach and range of weaponry. Armies fought in linear formations and engaged with shoulder arms, while the range of turn of the century artillery was limited to just a few miles. Its targets were almost always clearly military in nature, except for those rare situations when a siege was undertaken, and the laws of land warfare have always been relatively forgiving in the case of sieges. What changed all this was the airplane, because its range was orders of magnitude greater than artillery. Suddenly (and I use the term intentionally...a leap in range of at least 1000% over the span of less than a decade qualifies as "sudden") all of the army's "rear areas" were open to attack, including perhaps its capital city, such as London or Paris. The result of the synergies between new technology (the bomber) and human factors (the revulsion against the futility and slaughter of WW I-style trench warfare) was--to use the current buzz phrase--a revolution in military affairs. Airmen such as Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, and Hugh Trenchard thought they saw a way to avoid a repetition of the carnage and bloodbath of WW I. The airplane could take the war directly to new and vital targets...the social, political and industrial centers of national power that had heretofore been unreachable. But this placed the new weapon precisely on the horns of a sharp ethical dilemma. Unlike armies on a battlefield, these targets were often totally interspersed with the noncombatant, civilian populace that the law of war was expressly intended to protect. Which, then, was the greater evil or good...to protect the civilians at the expense of another generation of Europe's young men, or to spare hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of young soldiers by killing and injuring a lesser but still very large number of innocent civilians? Not until the recent development and demonstrated proof of the effectiveness of precision weaponry has this conundrum been alleviated, albeit at the cost of a new conundrum discussed earlier.

This returns to the information society's intermingling of military and civilian systems, for Information Warfare forces us to face anew the ethical difficulty faced by Douhet, Mitchell and Trenchard. If Bits and Bytes offer an alternative form of exerting national power than bombs and bullets, which ethical mandate should we follow? That which attempts to hold separate the military from the civilian, no matter what the overall cost in blood and suffering, or that which attempts to minimize the destructiveness and duration of the conflict, even at the expense of affecting systems or functions that are clearly and unquestionably civilian? Worse, might our own national infrastructures and systems lead an opponent into precisely this course of action? Since by our own admission over 90% of DOD's daily communications travel over civilian owned and operated communication systems, doesn't this condition make our national information infrastructure a viable, legal and ethical target in case of conflict? Perhaps, and it well illustrates the dilemma that the integrated information society poses for the military planner who must take such legal and ethical concerns into consideration when planning possible military operations. As with airpower theory in the 1920s and 30s, the new technology combines with human factors such as the desire to reduce bloodshed to provide a new form of warfare...IW.

The development of new capabilities has not simplified the situation, only exacerbated it. Some of these capabilities can be grouped into four general types: intelligence; offensive computer weaponry (hardware and software); directed energy-type weaponry (HERF guns, EMP devices, etc); and PSYOPs. In a narrow sense the discussion of intelligence might seem out of place, since espionage has not been considered the same as warfare (it lacks the destructiveness and violence, for starters), although it is indispensable to warfare. Henry Stimson's famous adage "gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail" notwithstanding, it is clear that throughout history men (gentle or otherwise) HAVE read other men's mail, especially when in the service of state or sovereign. In modern times the ability to electronically gather intelligence has become not only understood and accepted but its ethical correctness has become enshrined in the arms control lexicon as "national technical means", a crucial part of the verification process, without which the SALT and START agreements would have been impossible. But the new technologies of the information age raise a new and frightening specter...the inability to distinguish between espionage and war. In the "good old days" the two were clearly separate. Even such dangerous and legally-suspect activities as overflights of the USSR by U-2s in the 1950s were obviously not war; and if a state of armed conflict such as that between the USA and North Vietnam existed, activities (such as overflight) that would have been prohibited otherwise had the legal sanction as a permissible activity of a belligerent. But what if the espionage is conducted by computer, probing into adversary databanks and control systems to determine, for example, how their air defense system functions. Is the penetration passive, merely intelligence gathering, or was a trojan horse or logic bomb planted in the process, designed to "lower shields" on command? Would that be considered an "act of war"? The legal and ethical implications are a bit murky, and much might depend on the surrounding context and history.

Even this, however, does not get as murky as economic espionage. The "traditional" espionage that states conduct concerning political-military subjects are better understood...fighter plane design, treaty negotiations, weapons testing, etc. But suggestions that governments, at least those of free market economies, engage in espionage to gain economic intelligence immediately raises the issue of who will receive the coveted information...all of the different companies making the new and improved widgets, or just one company? Are any of the companies involved transnational, involving significant foreign elements? This may be the most difficult ethical issue involved in this suggestion because it involves domestic business practices and existing national business law. Yet his observation that other countries certainly engage in economic espionage is well taken, and faces us with the possibility that perhaps in some situations our ethical and legal restrictions on such activities may place us at a severe disadvantage in dealing with a country that does not share the same set of moral and ethical scruples as we.

The second general type of capability cited above concerns a form of computer warfare...modifying either the internal software or hardware to cause the enemy's computer to behave in a manner other than they expect. Software modifications are perhaps the better known of the two...viruses, logic bombs, trojan horses, and all the other means that have been developed to get the software or programming to carry out actions or instructions that serve your purposes. Hardware modifications, such as "chipping" the microchip to add or delete key functions, are more difficult, requiring access to the chip before it is ever installed in the machine. Not surprisingly, there are a couple of ethical questions that come to the surface.

Although much depends on "when" the action is being taken, gaining entry into someone's operating system (and whether that someone is a person or a state does matter) and planting software instructions carries the same ethical concerns as carrying out that action for intelligence gathering purposes. If we are "at peace" such an act could range from being a criminal act to being an act of information age statecraft, although the laws and ethical standards that guide the conduct of individuals, corporations and states vary significantly. If we are "at war" or in a state of armed conflict such an act would be a legitimate act of belligerency...although we'll leave the definition of "at war" open for the moment. It would seem that when engaged in war, the degree of intrusiveness required to gain access to an adversary computer system and alter the programming would be minor compared to the amount of intrusiveness necessary to place a 1000lb laser guided bomb in the programming! In the case of peacetime hardware modifications, however, such as "chipping", the issues become murkier. Unless one postulates the ability to gain physical access to the enemy computer during wartime and insert the "secret chip", this would have to be accomplished during "peacetime", which carries some interesting ethical issues. If the chip being "chipping" is commercially manufactured, are we involving the manufacturer in the effort? There could be some interesting legal complications from that action downstream. If other nations that do business with the firm learn of its complicity and cut their ties, is the government responsible for their loss? Even if such a loss is not a legal liability, is it an ethical one? If we take such an action, have we crossed an invisible line that separates "prudent preparation" from "hostile action"? If you take into account modern electronic warfare that can provide the rationale for using deadly force (firing an anti-radiation missile against a radar site) based solely on the way electrons are used (switching a radar from the surveillance mode to target acquisition/firing mode), there are interesting and pragmatic precedents for gauging hostility solely on the way one uses cyberspace.

The third category of information weaponry, those that employ some form of energy, seem to be the most similar to traditional forms of weaponry, even if they work their impact by rearranging electrons rather than atoms, steel plates, or body parts. The ethical conundrums would come from the target against which the weapon would be used and the existence or lack of a state of war. Disabling the electronics of a fighter plane or air defense radar during wartime would be fully in agreement with the existing laws of war and would face no ethical dilemmas regarding such an action; disabling the electronics of a civilian airliner or an air traffic control radar during peacetime, however, would be a criminal act, and even if done during wartime might very well violate one or more of the basic principles that instruct the law of war, such as discrimination or proportionality. In short, the ethical issues involved here stem from the function or capability of the target being struck and whether a state of conflict exists at the time of use. These are issues similar to those faced in the use of current and traditional kinetic weaponry.

It is in the fourth general category, psychological operations or PSYOPS, that we find an interesting blend of the traditional and the new to pose ethical concerns surrounding the use of information warfare. Propaganda and disinformation have a long and storied history in the annals of warfare and statecraft. Napoleon's agents preceded the armies of Revolutionary and Imperial France as they marched across Europe, posting handbills in soon-to-be-liberated towns announcing the imminent arrival of the Enlightenment. In World War I, the British decision to sever all of the transatlantic telegraph cables that linked Germany to the outside world meant that the view of the war seen in New York was the one filtered through a lens in London. In 1995, Ecuador went onto the Net with web pages full of information proving that Peru was the aggressor in their border clash. Earlier information technologies such as the radio and TV provided new and potent ways to engage in IW, and the microchip has not simplified the issue. Can anyone who saw Tom Hanks conversing with John F Kennedy in the movie "Forrest Gump" have any doubts that it is technologically possible to produce computer-enhanced or "morphed" videotape that clearly and conclusively shows adversary leadership violating sacred religious or cultural precepts, in order to destabilize a regime? How would the new technology have served George, the protagonist of Orwell's novel 1984, who's job it was to rewrite history? What will happen when someone generates "new" Holocaust imagery and thus calls into question the entire body of information regarding the Nazi's genocide campaign? What will happen to the old saw, "seeing is believing" when the eyes can be so easily fooled? What are the ethical issues involved in such possible techniques and operations? Does the status or location of the intended or target audience (domestic, international, enemy, etc) affect this issue? This is not an area for which the law currently has many answers...mostly questions that fall well outside of the common understanding of the law of war. There are existing American laws that address the issue of conducting psyops or propaganda within the US...it's against the law! But new information technologies make some of these prescriptions difficult. There have already been cases in which material disseminated overseas by the USIA has been electronically posted to the internet and thus became available domestically to American citizens, which resulted in threatened lawsuits. The issue here is the dreaded term "perception management", and the possibility that the information being used manage the perceptions of foreign audiences and groups could be used by someone to shape or manage the perceptions of the American populace. Both the legality and ethics of such an activity would be questionable, regardless of the technology used to carry it out.

A particularly thorny issue that is surfacing concerns the possibility for assymetrical conflict between a state and a non-state. The Information Age offers some unique capabilities for non-state entities to engage in conflict with one state while using another for cover, or even the reverse...a state using an NGO for cover! The legal and ethical mix is fascinating...how would a state respond to such an action, especially if the means used were informational or non-lethal. Could a digital, electronic informational attack, whether by a state or another entity, meet the criteria of the terminology used in the UN Charter, such as "armed attack" and "Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression"?

This last point brings us full circle and to closure on the question "what is an act of war in the Information Age?" Does the oft-cited "Clausewitzian Paradigm" require force, violence, and nation-state actors for there to be "war"? It's somewhat ironic that despite entirely appropriate caution about the current overuse of the word "War", our Services do not have a "Law of War", but rather a "Law of Armed Conflict"! And how do we define "force" and "violence"? If we compel another state or political actor to do our will haven't we "forced" them to do so, whether or not we've used high explosive? Must the means used to exert the force be violent, in isolation of the ends or outcomes? To further argue the issue, what is the real difference whether a hostile state used surface-to-air missiles to shoot down 10 airliners and kill 1000 people or used advanced technological IW devices to jam their flight controls so that the same airliners crashed and the same people were killed? Is there an ethical or legal difference between those actions? By 6AM local time on 17 January 1991 there was no doubt that a "state of armed conflict" existed between Iraq and the UN Coalition, after we had physically destroyed much of their integrated air defense system. Would the situation have been significantly different if we had been able to do so solely using advanced technological means, without penetrating or violating Iraq's sovereign airspace or dropping any high explosive bombs? Would that exercise and demonstration of information power equate to "war", as did the 1991 exercise of airpower. The book is still very much open, and we need a vigorous and spirited debate, on the ethical and legal status of IW and the new paradigm of information age national security. There's a new technology in town, there's a new environment in which we're just beginning to learn how to operate, and if history is any guide, we'll be wrestling with these issues for decades to come.